


Beneath The Coming Frost

by astolat



Series: Witcher works [10]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, The White Frost, Tir ná Lia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 03:34:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13045638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/pseuds/astolat
Summary: He hadn’t understood what the White Frost was, beyond death and cold, but sitting here…he was beginning to grasp it, to get a sense of the true danger.





	Beneath The Coming Frost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wednesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/gifts).



 

They sat together in silence across the fire from each other, waiting for the next portal to open. The wind was howling around the lighthouse with a sound like voices crying out. Snowflakes floated in through the narrow windows above and blew in at the door from the tall drifts outside. Pretty soon the slopes would get big enough to collapse and inundate the entrance again, filling the ice passage that Avallac’h had made to clear the door.

Geralt was used to death, to human misery. It never lingered in his head. That was part of being a witcher: horror, pain, sorrow, fear, all were muted. But there was something strangely terrible about this frozen world, the slow creep of something irresistible that had crawled in all the windows and doors. They were all long dead, the people here, but Geralt could still feel their presence. Their voices _were_ in that wind. They’d been devoured so slowly and carefully, little by little, that echoes of them were still lingering. Not powerful enough to manifest; the torment had been measured out, slow and gentle, nothing terrible enough to generate a wraith. Only enough…to _hold_ them.

Before this, he hadn’t understood what the White Frost was, other than death and cold, but sitting here, on this world it had devoured, he was beginning to grasp the true danger. What it was that they were really facing. He looked across the room at Avallac’h. The Sage raised his head from his hands and looked back.

“The people who lived here,” Geralt said. “They’re…still here.”

Avallac’h stared at him in blank, open surprise. “Yes,” he said, after a moment, almost warily, like Geralt had just—unexpectedly sprouted wings, or something. “Say no more,” he added sharply, raising a hand. “Not here. It would be…unwise to draw attention.”

As soon as he said it, Geralt felt that, too: they were deep in the monster’s range, its territory. It wasn’t right here, but it was close. They were too small on their own to really catch its eye, but there wasn’t a lot of prey left on this world, either. If they made too much noise, let it feel their presence, it would come.

Geralt stood up and rubbed his hands against each other and held them out to the fire, prosaic, letting himself settle into the place as if he was part of it, the way he did when he was staking out some monster’s den, settling in to wait for it to come home. “How much longer?” he asked, just another person in the cold, shivering and uncomfortable and tired, hoping faintly for it to end even as resignation settled in.

Avallac’h kept eyeing him sidelong. “Not long now,” was all he said.

The portal finally opened half an hour later, and they stepped through it and into a warm breath of fragrant air coming down a palace hallway, full of the scent of flowers and new leaves: a springtime that felt suddenly as fragile and ephemeral as mist.

Avallac’h came out behind him, appearing from thin air. Geralt waited until the faint ozone stink of the portal faded completely away, and then he said, “All the worlds we went through. The dead sea, the frozen planet, that one you landed in with the sun that had just died. They were all…”

He stopped; he didn’t quite know what he wanted to say, what it was about them. They hadn’t all been _dead_ worlds; there had been that lush forest with its haze of green organic mist, the vast trees rising all around. But they had all felt like…graveyards. As soon as he had the thought, he was sure of it. There had been something underneath that forest too; those tall red flowers had been rising out of the decay of some deep-buried heart. The worlds weren’t all dead, but they were…places _of_ death. Worlds under a shadow.

Avallac’h was looking at him narrowly. “You have seen more than most.”

“Is that _why_ we can move between them?” Geralt asked. “Because the White Frost…connects them?”

“It is more complicated than that. Say rather that death means different things, in different places. There are worlds where the dead never rise. The White Frost does not hunt there. Neither can portals reach them.” Avallac’h paused, and then added abruptly, “Your kind came from such a world.”

“A world without magic,” Geralt said.

Avallac’h shrugged a little. “You humans apply that word inconsistently. There are simply…different rules. Come.”

He walked down the corridor. Geralt followed, silent, letting the information work in the back of his head. The palace walls were smooth, polished stone, something like grey marble threaded through with veins of gleaming silver, and all of it delicately overgrown with moss and vines: on purpose, he was pretty sure. The green spread over them in patterns that made the entire surface almost some kind of living painting, in grey and green and silver.

The corridor let them out onto a wide terrace overlooking a deep valley full of towers and shining domes that seemed almost to emerge out of a wilderness of trees and vines. Pale lights gleamed out of distant windows, not the flicker of firelight and torches but steadier, bluish and violet. Avallac’h led them down a staircase and onto a wide plaza a little closer down, and paused there at the railing. “Look,” Avallac’h said, gesturing with a wide arm over the view. “Tell me what you see.”

It was wide and beautiful, serene, but when Geralt looked at it, he felt…not quite the same thing, but close. A sense of twilight, of something slipping away under the camouflage of vines and living trees trying to hold back a fundamental erosion. “It’s close,” Geralt said after a moment. “The White Frost. It’s close to this world.”

Avallac’h inclined his head. “Yes. It draws very near.” He stood looking for another moment himself. His face was elven-stern and mostly unreadable; Geralt had never been able to tell if he was happy or angry or even annoyed. His expression didn’t really change now, either, but looking at him, Geralt slowly realized that _he_ was under the shadow, too. It was odd, because he would’ve thought Avallac’h of all the elves could escape. But…he wasn’t going to. Not by choice, not some deliberate self-sacrifice or going down with the ship. He was just… _caught_. They all were. Like the people who had been in the buildings with snow drifting over their houses, lighting fires and scratching out words to hope with until they couldn’t even do that anymore; until all they could do was huddle silently, waiting for an end that was never really going to come. Trapped.

And that was what Eredin was trying to avert. He wanted Ciri so he could use her to open an escape route from here to _Geralt’s_ world, to someplace further from the destruction coming. Geralt almost couldn’t blame him for it anymore, understanding what was coming for them. But it was already too late. Maybe they would be able to cross through a portal. But even if they did, the White Frost would follow them. _His_ world was under the shadow, too.

And Avallac’h understood that. _Eredin succumbed to his knowledge of the apocalypse,_ Avallac’h had said. _Fear rules him now. I’ll not commit the same error._ He knew Eredin’s plan wasn’t going to work. “So what do _you_ want from Ciri?” Geralt said.

Avallac’h didn’t answer. “Come,” he said. “With this light, I think we’ll find Ge’els on the western balcony.”

#

After they finished talking to Ge’els, Avallac’h took him back inside and upstairs and opened the doors to a room the size of a grand ballroom, with a round bed large enough for a fiend to nap on comfortably in the center on a dais, and a balcony with a massive steaming bathing-pool set in the floor. A long table was covered with platters, fruit and cheese and roast meat and wine, tiered dishes covered with delicate cakes and candies; a faint murmuring strain of music was floating in from somewhere, just loud enough to hear clearly, and a fountain gurgled softly into the pool. It was as clear an invitation to shut his brain off as Geralt had ever seen. 

“We will have to wait until a portal straight back opens,” Avallac’h said, gesturing. “A day or two, perhaps. Ge’els would not be willing to follow a circuitous course such as the one we took to come here. You may rest and refresh yourself here.”

“Uh huh,” Geralt said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Avallac’h, you didn’t actually need me along for this trip. Ge’els was ready to come. So what you mean is, because I didn’t know any better, you figured you’d take a shot at dumping me between points A and B. Is there some _reason_ you elves can’t ever just play it straight?”

“Yes,” Avallac’h said unexpectedly. “You said it yourself, witcher. Honesty is not in our nature. Why do you at once perceive it clearly, and yet maintain the appearance of surprise when it is confirmed?”

Geralt stared at him. Avallac’h was looking at him intently, like he meant the question seriously, and it _was_ a good question, actually. Geralt didn’t know why it surprised him a little, every time. Except that elves always… _felt_ honest somehow. Because they were such good liars? No; that wasn’t it. There were plenty of humans who were good liars. He didn’t keep falling for their bullshit once he knew better. But the elves…the elves were _telling the truth_ when they lied, in some fundamental way.

 _Different rules,_ Geralt thought suddenly. The elves worked on different rules. The same rules that made magic possible, and travel between worlds, and something that fed upon them all. But humans _didn’t_ work on those rules. Humans had stumbled through the Conjunction of the Spheres into a world where they fundamentally didn’t belong: where they didn’t match the Elder Races, the monsters that preyed on them, the magic that bubbled up around. It didn’t _save_ them from those things; it didn’t mean those things weren’t real. It just meant that humans didn’t line up.

But Ciri—was in between. With the power of the Elder Blood, that strange elusive magic that had come down to her twice; once in a direct line from Lara Dorren, and then again through the tangled route that led to the House of Emreis and the emperors of Nilfgaard.

 Geralt hadn’t said a word, but Avallac’h was straightening away from him as if he’d said it all aloud, that wary look coming back into his face, like it was his turn to be surprised. “I guess I could ask _you_ just about the same question,” Geralt said. “But I don’t have to. I know why you keep getting surprised. You _want_ to think it’s all Lara Dorren. You want to think she made a _mistake_. When she ditched you to marry a human instead, all those thousands of years ago.” Avallac’h’s face actually hardened visibly just a little, his mouth tightening. Geralt nodded. “Yeah. She didn’t get it wrong. _You_ did.”

 “Be silent,” Avallac’h said, ice cold. His hands had clenched at his sides. “You know _nothing_ of Lara, _dh’oine_ ; you understand nothing—”

“I understand _this,_ ” Geralt said. “It’s not that Ciri’s got the straightest line to the Elder Blood. All the queens of Cintra were descended in a straight line from Lara Dorren; none of them had the power the way she does. And it’s just not some damn cosmic accident, either, even if that’s the story you’ve been feeding yourself.” Avallac’h flinched the tiniest bit. “It’s that Ciri’s got _more_ lines going back to Lara Dorren. With _more humans_ mixed in.” He snorted suddenly. “Hell, the Nilfgaardians are the ones who’ve had it right all along. Breeding between elves and humans, over and over— _they’re_ the ones who made Ciri possible. Not you at all. You don’t even really see what she is.”

Avallac’h stood there perfectly still, his face gone blank, staring at Geralt; after a moment he said, slowly, “ _But_ _you do_ ,” and something ferocious suddenly came alight in his eyes. It was so completely unexpected that Geralt went for his sword an instant too late as Avallac’h just— _exploded_ towards him, grabbed him by the throat and pushed him back into the room in a blurring, impossible rush, like the fabric of reality was fraying around them.

He slammed Geralt backwards down onto the bed by the throat and the shoulder, leaning deeply over him: his face was twisted, his pale eyes wide and suddenly bloodshot with a tracework of fine red lines, all that cool, deeply controlled façade shattering and falling away from him like eggshells. “ _What_ do you see?” Avallac’h was snarling down at him, and maybe it _hadn’t_ been Geralt’s best idea ever to find a way to push an elven Sage into an maddened frenzy. “Tell me what you see. _How_ do you see—”

Geralt managed to get a boot heel planted on the top of the footboard, and then he slammed his elbow up and cracked Avallac’h across the temple before flipping them over; he got Avallac’h’s wrists and pinned him flat. Avallac’h winced his head briefly away from the impact, but he didn’t actually seem to care beyond that; he just kept his blazing gaze on Geralt’s face, lips pulled back from his teeth in fury. “ _Tell me!_ ” he snarled, rearing partway up from the bed. “ _Tell me how you know!_ ”

 _Damn_ he was strong. Geralt just barely managed to shove him back down. But he snarled back, “Because _I’m_ in between too, you idiot,” and Avallac’h abruptly quit fighting; he sank down flat, staring up at him.

Geralt hadn’t realized it was the truth until it came out of his mouth, but it _was_ ; of course it was. He hadn’t been _bred_ that way, but he’d been _made_ that way at eleven years old, when witcher mutagens, the essence of monsters and magic, had been infused into his wide-open, rapidly changing human body. He’d been _changed,_ pushed out on the very border of humanity, so he could make a buffer between them and the world pressing in, the world where they didn’t fit. And when he looked at Ciri—at Ciri, at human mages—he knew they were _like him_. They were in the borderlands too.

And Avallac’h _didn’t_ see it, and it wasn’t just because he didn’t want to. He looked at Ciri and saw only the part he understood, the elven blood and elven magic. He’d tried over and over to pull her back towards _his side_ —to make her more like Lara, to get her closer—because he’d thought _that_ was the source of her power. The only source. “And _that’s_ why you wanted to get rid of me,” Geralt said, shaking his head in irritation as he figured it out. “Because I’ve got too much _human_ _influence_ on her. _Great_ idea.”

“Yes,” Avallac’h said. “I begin to think I know nothing of you at all.” And then he heaved them over with a sudden blurring flip, and when Geralt hit the bed, Avallac’h seized his face in his hands and kissed him.

Geralt made a muffled squawk, _what the hell,_ and then Avallac’h got his other hand into Geralt’s _pants_ and pressed three fingertips into his bare skin just above the hipbone, murmured something into Geralt’s mouth, and _oh shit._ Geralt missed large chunks of the next five minutes because he was too busy ripping Avallac’h’s clothes off with his dagger; his own armor was unbuckling itself and coming off without any more effort required than ducking his head, so it wasn’t enough to distract him. Then they were rolling around together on the bed, skin to skin, the way he desperately wanted; and it was fantastic, but he did manage to gasp out, “What the _hell_ ,” between Avallac’h dragging his mouth softly along his throat.

“Shhh,” Avallac’h murmured. He sounded dreamy himself, almost drugged, as if he’d done whatever it was to himself, too. His hands were sliding over Geralt’s sides, wide and palming him. “Shh, hush, I will have you.”

Why exactly that was supposed to make him _relax,_ Geralt had no idea, except Avallac’h picked that moment to reach down and stroke his fingertips up along the sides of Geralt’s thighs, feather-light, an almost electrical charge shivering away from the touch and through his entire groin. His cock jerked helplessly, leaking. Avallac’h caught it in a suddenly firm grip and slid his thumb over the head for one hard, satisfying, vivid moment before letting _go_ —the bastard—and then he was slowly and thoroughly _licking_ the wet smear off his thumb, his eyes closed, his lips parted. “Yes,” he breathed out, shuddering, and sank back into the pillows almost limply. “Come,” he said, and reached down and stroked his fingertips over the length of Geralt’s cock again before lying back heavy-lidded, his thighs parted, an invitation. “Come.”

Geralt groaned and grabbed Avallac’h’s legs and shoved them up and went into him with a single surging thrust. “Aah,” Avallac’h gasped, jerking up—yeah, _that_ got his eyes open and his mouth shocked, but fuck him, he’d _asked_ for it—or more to the point, he _hadn’t_ asked for it, so now he could damn well _have_ it. “ _Oh_ ,” he strangled out, falling back against the pillows. “Oh, _terasti,_ ” which sounded like some kind of swear. 

“Ready for it?” Geralt said through his teeth.

Avallac’h was staring up at the ceiling blindly, heaving for breath. “Yes,” he said hoarsely, after a moment. “Yes. Come, let me have it, _now_ ,” urgently, and Geralt groaned through his clenched jaw and fucked into him again. Avallac’h shuddered all over and let himself sink back again, his eyes closing again. His head turned sideways against the pillows, his arms carelessly flung outward where they’d fallen; his whole body yielding completely. Geralt fucked him hard and fast, pounding him, and Avallac’h shuddered and groaned satisfyingly beneath him, his gasps rising in pitch as Geralt worked faster, getting close to the edge. But Geralt had figured out what Avallac’h wanted, even if he didn’t know _why,_ so when he was almost there, just barely holding on, he _stopped,_ deliberately, and pulled almost all the way out. Avallac’h made a strangled noise of protest and tried to pull him back in, but Geralt just braced against the headboard and held there until he eased off from the edge.

“Still want it?” he said, deliberately pushing back in a little, shallow thrusts.

“ _Curse_ you, witcher, _do it,_ ” Avallac’h snarled.

Geralt grabbed his hips and fucked back in, another dozen hard fast strokes, and Avallac’h groaned and was moving with him, both of them rolling through the motion, and Geralt was right on the edge again when he stopped it. Avallac’h actually hissed at him that time, absolutely livid now; Geralt grinned savagely down at him. “Just tell me when you want me to stop.” He reached down and grabbed Avallac’h’s cock and gave it a few good pulls; Avallac’h grunted faintly and shuddered all over. “Again,” he said through his teeth.

Geralt fucked him another half a dozen times. Avallac’h came apart somewhere in the fourth round and just started writhing under him, moaning as he came himself. That almost got Geralt too; his cock pulsed a little, involuntarily, and Avallac’h let out a series of short tight panting breaths, his arm flung over his face and his other hand clenched onto the headboard. Geralt managed to pull out part of the way and squeezed down on his cock to stop it, and Avallac’h actually _whimpered_ , and then the last two rounds were because Geralt had started _wanting_ to see Avallac’h get it, which pissed him off.

“Must you— _insist_ —on being—as contrary as you— _possibly_ can,” Avallac’h strangled out; Geralt had pulled out and turned him over and pinned his wrists to the headboard and was fucking him from behind, getting as deep as he could with every stroke. “Oh. Oh, oh, _Geralt,_ ” and Geralt finally groaned and gripped him by the hips and dragged Avallac’h back hard onto his cock and let go, pulsing hard into him. Avallac’h moaned and just let his head and shoulders collapse into the pillows with Geralt holding his hips up, his face stricken with an expression almost like pain and his hands clenched into fists of pillow as he shuddered through it. Geralt thrust him flat without ever slipping out, blanketing his body and keeping his hips pressed deep, letting himself feel the tremors shivering all over Avallac’h’s body.

“Oh,” Avallac’h groaned muffled, underneath him, when it was over. Geralt slid out of him and fell over onto his back, panting.

“Happy now?” Geralt said, sarcastically, when he’d gotten his breath back.

“Not _precisely_ the term…I would use,” Avallac’h said, a bit faintly. He wasn’t making the slightest move to get up. Or even the slightest move at all, actually. “Are you always…this vigorous?”

“Try that on me again and find out,” Geralt said. He only half meant it as a threat. “What the hell were you even after?”

Avallac’h drew a deep breath and rolled over onto his back. “I will know,” he said. “I will know _why she did it_.”

Why Lara Dorren had taken her priceless gift, the Elder Blood, and borne a child to a human mage—someone _else_ in-between—instead of to _him_. “Has it occurred to you that maybe she just liked the guy better?” Geralt said, resigned, after a moment.

“No,” Avallac’h said flatly. “Lara loved me, as I did her. We knew one another a thousand years and more before she ever met Cregennan. I was away when…and by the time I returned, she was already dead, and I never knew…” He stopped and looked away, his whole face closed up tight: lips a thin line, eyes shut. After a moment he said thickly, “You are right. I did _not_ see. But Lara _did_. She knew. Ithlinne foretold that only the seed of the Elder Blood would save us, and somehow, Lara knew…that the seed must be planted in human soil. And so she…” His voice choked off, and the thin trickle of a tear slid out of the corner of his clenched eyes and down his face to the sheets. It was more emotion than Geralt had ever seen on an elven face. “I _will know_ ,” Avallac’h whispered again. “I will see what she saw. And then I will know _why…_ ”

Geralt blew out a breath, running a hand down his face. Lara Dorren had been dead for fifteen hundred years, and Avallac’h was _still_ hung up on trying to figure out what she’d been thinking. “And _this_ was your plan for how?”

Avallac’h didn’t answer right away. His face was smoothing out, relaxing again; he was putting back on the armor of his composure. “I do confess it didn’t occur to me you would be the one human I have ever heard of _objecting_ to the _seth adhlinne_ ,” he said finally, dry. “Ordinarily it makes your kind extremely cooperative.”

Geralt snorted. “Serves you right. But how does this help you? You just want to bang a human and get the idea? Because if you were hoping for something else to happen, maybe I should point out that I’m _sterile_ and you’re _male_.”

“Neither is an insurmountable obstacle, if necessary,” Avallac’h said.

Geralt froze, staring up at the ceiling. “Uh. _What?_ ”

“However, there’s no need to be excessively alarmed,” Avallac’h said. “I don’t _think_ I’ll actually have to bear a child to understand.” Then he paused, and added, “Or induce you to bear one, I suppose.” In _thoughtful tones_.

Geralt heaved himself up and glared at him. “This had _better_ be one of those times when you’re _lying to me_.”

Avallac’h’s mouth twitched up at one corner. “Well, it might help if you were willing to be a little more… _cooperative_ ,” he said blandly.  

“You want it that badly, huh?” Geralt said, still glaring.

Except Avallac’h pushed himself up and looked at him with his mouth a thin and somehow bitterly unhappy line, his eyes glittering. “I am of the Aen Saevherne,” he said, low and suddenly deadly serious. “Past and future are open to my eyes; countless mysteries of space and time have unfolded themselves in my understanding. Yet I have lived now a thousand years and more with a question in my heart that I could not answer, a question that holds the key to the defeat of the White Frost. _Yes,_ Geralt. _I want it that badly._ Will you give it to me?”

Geralt stared at him, and then heaved a deep, resigned sigh, pushed himself the rest of the way up and climbed off the bed. He really didn't know how the hell he ended up in these situations, and he'd given up trying to figure it out. “I’m going to take a bath,” he said. “Come on in and I’ll see how _cooperative_ I’m willing to be.”


End file.
